WSO2Con2024 - Software Delivery in Hybrid Environments

WSO2Con2024 - Software Delivery in Hybrid Environments

1. Software Delivery in
Hybrid (Cloud)
Environments
Binura Gunasekara
Associate Director/Architect
WSO2

2. There are two kinds of people:
those who think Hybrid Clouds are a
fantastic idea, and those who have had
to run them in production.
– Me, circa today

3. Standard issue definition:
Private infrastructure ↔ Public Cloud
Recap
3

4. The Whys
4
1.Transitions

5. The Whys
5
2. Functional reasons

6. The Whys
6
3. Business continuity

7. Failure Points
1.Design rot
2.Chasing (the illusion of) portability
3.Developer experience adversity
a.Tooling chaos
b.Platform overhead
7

8. Design Rot
-“No one knows what that does”
-“No one knows why it works”
-“No one knows where that
(network) goes”


8
“Where should this new thing go?”
“Not sure… chuck it wherever”.

9. “Portability” might only be skin-deep
-It’s (relatively) easy to move containerized applications around.

-Applications front things that are not-so-easy to move around.
-Or moving them around could be costly.
-Eg. Databases, Queues, …so on and so forth.

-Replicated architectures... on hybrid clouds... for high availability and/or
portability – Is your stack really portable?
9

10. 10
can you spot the problem?
A simplified example, but

11. Developer
Adversity
11

12. Fancy CI/CD for the cloud, SSH and cp (copy) to that
on-prem box.
-Observability? What observability?
-Guesswork
-Frustration

-Processes and tools designed to fight you; not support you.

-Too many tools. Too little time to get actual work done.
12

13. Getting it right

14. ●Design to optimize the benefits of a Hybrid Cloud.
○You can also design to make your life miserable.

●Prefer domain-driven partitioning over replication (if possible)
●Cell-based architecture gives you a scalable framework to build,
reason with and visualize your enterprise architecture.
○A framework to model your enterprise architecture into self-contained
implementation units.
○Controlled ingress and egress points:
■Observability
■Access controls
■…towards zero-trust
Avoiding design rot.
14

15. Cell-based architecture
15https://github.com/wso2/reference-architecture/blob/master/reference-architecture-cell-based.md

16. Cell-based architecture
16https://github.com/wso2/reference-architecture/blob/master/reference-architecture-cell-based.md
“A cell is
independently
deployable,
manageable, and
observable.”

17. 17
Source:
github.com/wso2/reference-architecture/blob/
master/reference-architecture-cell-based.md
Loose coupling

18. ●You now have self-contained, portable* units of business/functional
capability – loose coupling.

●*Portability can still be restricted by technology choices.
Eg. Being backed by a proprietary database.

●A great read: Google–“Don't get locked up into avoiding lock-in”
⦿Reference: https://martinfowler.com/articles/oss-lockin.html
Portable units of deployment
18

19. A centralized control plane
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●

Disclaimer: This is definitely not “scientific” ;)

●Centralize control - distribute capability.
●Be (reasonably) opinionated.
○Finding the golden path can take a long time.
○What you think is right today can be wrong tomorrow.
○This will be a continuous, ever-evolving process.

20. 20

21. North star: Become Platformless!

...How do you do that?

Build to enable your developers.
21

22. Thank You!